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Vasari and The Creation of The Pitti Palace in Florence

During the same period that Vasari was working on the Uffizi Ammannati was commissioned to enlarge and remodel the Pitti Palace. In his design of the courtyard Ammannati resolved a carefully calculated system of relationships full of dynamic implications; it was a highly personalized interpretation of the Uffizi theme: parallel porticoed paths defining an empty central space that is enclosed on all sides, while relating to the urban context in the sense of sequence.

In this specific case there is, in one direction, the sloping piazza and the urban fabric of the Oltrarno district seen from above (roof height) and framed on the central axis of the building through the porch; and in the other direction a sequence of diversely qualified open spaces. It is all made of stone yet permeated with light and resonance, the courtyard, the greenery and the other spaces: staggered and linked along the slopes of the Boboli hill.

Thus the wall-volume solution (grotto and terrace above with the fountain on the axis of the entire spatial arrangement) that closes the courtyard facing Boboli is fundamental according to a concept that recurs in several Mannerist villas, and primarily the Villa Giulia. Within this general concept one must understand the stupendous work on the walls, where the vitality of the plasticity and decorations is conceived in terms of how it is viewed from different angles, different levels and different distances, consistently with the spatial-dynamic development of the paths in the palace-garden sequence.

No matter who actually designed the gardens, it was Ammannati who had the idea of blending architecture and greenery into a single whole, a single design, a single structure. And while the land on the hillside was modelled according to a very carefully prepared scheme, the greenery itself became building material.

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